[asterisk-users] Installing Asterisk to it's own directory

[Stephen Brown]

I'd like to start playing with 1.8, however I don't want to potentially 
damage anything on my existing 1.6.2 install on my production server.

I'd like to test 1.8 against my existing configs leaving my 1.6.2 
install untouched. Looking at the output of ./configure --help suggests 
that it's possible to install Asterisk into another prefix of my 
choosing, but as this is unfamiliar territory to me I'm not exactly sure 
how to accomplish this?

Ideally, I'd like to just dump the newly compiled 1.8 and all it's 
dependencies into a standalone directory (say /testing/asterisk or 
something) and update my init script to point to the new binaries. I 
also run a Sangoma USB FXO card and DAHDI for a POTS line that I would 
like to test as well, should it work with the pre-compiled binaries that 
are already there? (DAHDI, etc)

I've never tried this before, and before I potentially break something 
I'd like to know if it's possible and how to implement it?

Thanks,
Stephen